Question about new home screen widgets

[wturnage]

I've been reading the new Web Developers Library 1.4, and had a question about the home screen widgets which isn't clear from the documentation.

What I would like to do is have a home screen widget that when clicked, just executes widget code instead of opening the widget in full screen.

A basic example of this would be a simple RSS reader widget that displays the latest news article on your home screen, but when you click the widget on the home screen, instead of launching the full screen widget we could override the action and call widget.openURL() instead and send users straight to the mobile web page. Another example would be a calendar widget that displays your next upcoming alarm. If a user clicks on it, you would want to send them to the native calendar app, not your full screen widget.

Is this possible?

-Will

[wile22]

Hi,

Any information on the "Home Screen Widget" feature that is mentioned in the Web Developer's library? Though the documentation mentions the possibility of this, it's not clear if we have have any patch over S60 5th edition v0.9 SDK or if there is any latest version of SDK that would support this feature. Information in this regard would be helpful.

Regards
Wile

[darroyo]

This will not be possible in the current implementation of the Homescreen as such. In reality miniview-enabled widgets are constantly running. When the user clicks on the miniview, the widget (which is already running) receives an onresize event with the new available viewport (which is full screen), at this point the widget could decide to do something and call window.close() which will put the widget back into the background.

[wile22]

Hi darroyo,

Thanks for the response. But any clue on when this is going to be supported in the S60 SDK? As the Web Developer's Library mentions about the procedure to create MiniView hope there is a plan to have the support in SDK too.

Regards
Wile

[InYourDreamz]

I was a little disappointed when I found out that the miniview is nothing but a snapshot of the fullsize widget ... without any functionalities. All it does is display information from the full view widget with a 1s update. I am really hoping and looking forward to a more robust homescreen widget where users will be able to interact with the widget :\

You guys got a few more months to go! Update the SDK :P :P

[uptian]

Hi darroyo,

Thanks for the response. But any clue on when this is going to be supported in the S60 SDK? As the Web Developer's Library mentions about the procedure to create MiniView hope there is a plan to have the support in SDK too.

Regards
Wile

yes, we are working on releasing the SDK that supports homescreen widget. The homescreen documentation has been released in the web developer library, so developers can start learning about homescreen widgets. This will help them to quickly develop/test the homescreen widgets when the SDK is ready.

Homescreen widgets is the current 5th edition touch widgets with the ability to be easily added to the homescreen and display some live feed info. Thus, developers can start working on the homescreen widgets by utilizing the current S60 5th Edition SDK and add the few lines of code to make homescreen widgets.

[uptian]

I was a little disappointed when I found out that the miniview is nothing but a snapshot of the fullsize widget ... without any functionalities. All it does is display information from the full view widget with a 1s update. I am really hoping and looking forward to a more robust homescreen widget where users will be able to interact with the widget :\

You guys got a few more months to go! Update the SDK :P :P

Thanks for your feedback. I agree that homescreen widgets that can interact directly with the users is a powerful concept. will share the feedback with my R&D colleagues.

The current homescreen widgets implementation is our effort to continually improving user experience by allowing users to add widgets to homescreen easily and providing an always open windows to social networking sites and Internet destinations. This is an improved experience compared to just static icon on the homescreen. I think N97 is the first mobile device that has this homescreen/miniview capability.

[yakimov]

Is the Nokia N96, the only one device that support Homescreen widgets ?
I try to put AccuWeather to my girlfriend 5530 homescreen unsuccessfully.

[isalento]

Hello,

To my knowledge only N97 and N97 mini supports home screen widgets.

-Ilkka